Japanese woodblock prints always seduce me—their luscious rich color, the intricate carved details reenacting an artist’s brushstroke or a delicate wash of color. No matter the context in which they are shown, they never cease to delight me, so I was very excited to go see the Picturing the West, Yokohama Prints 1859-1870s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA).

Not as achingly perfect as the secluded world of the Ukiyo-e prints populated by Hokusai, nor perhaps as exquisite as the prints by Yoshitoshi, these Yokohama prints were produced for the mass market in Japan the moment treaties opened the country to the world. In viewing this body of work, it is very clear how these prints are the equivalent to a contemporary postcard, snapshoti or cover of a tabloid magazine.The Ukiyo-e tradition developed in capital of Japanese Edo (modern day Tokyo). This rich tradition of woodcut has a highly stylized pictorial system of depiction, and like the Ukiyo-e, the Yokohama prints used a very specific formula. The system of production was divided into: publisher, artist, woodcarver, and printer; and they standardized the size of the woodblock and paper–printing images in sections, to speed the production in order to meet the rising demand for these prints.

The first Portuguese merchants landed by accident in Japan in 1542, followed by other western visitors including many Christian missionaries eager to convert the easterners, and as a direct result of the cultural clashes with the influx of these foreigners, Japan’s ruling Samurai class closed the country’s border in 1639 so that no foreigners could enter and Japanese citizens were forbidden to travel abroad.ii

The Yokohama show sets the scene for the opening of Japan to the West – the Tokugawa Shogunate remained in power until 1868 and negotiated the treaties, they were still in power during this time – the prints providing nearly a visual play-by-play, while the exhibition text explains the finer points of the politics of the day.

The Shogunate system in Japan had created a stable society with five classes. At the top were the Samurai, followed by peasants, artisans and merchants, but towards the middle of the 19th century, the Tokugawa government, which had held power for several centuries, was losing its hold. It had fallen victim to a steadily declining financial situation, several natural disasters, and a growing merchant class (hmm, this sounds vaguely contemporary). Conservative groups with anti-government, anti western feelings began vying for power.iiiJapan was coerced into signing treaties with five nations: Russia, United States, France, England and the Netherlands in order to open up trade and landing rights for foreign ships. When the borders were reopened to westerners in 1859, the print publishers were ready to fill the demand for information about the newly arrived visitors. From 1859-1861 there were some 500 different print images designed by 31 artists, produced by 50 or more publishers in Yokohama. These prints were frequently made in sets of five in a nod to the five nations who signed treaties with Japan.

The two galleries at the PMA are filled with almost 100 examples of Yokohama prints which document this cultural encounter of people, geography, architecture, port activity and trade. The works in the exhibition are grouped by subject matter – portraits of westerners, commerce, maps and leisure/entertainment activities. Each print contains a codified system of marks, which I had never seen broken down and identified, as it was in the wall text at the PMA. In each image, in the top right is the title of the print, below this is the censor’s mark, and at the bottom is the publishers seal, finally the artist’s name appears on a mark on the left of the image. There were often other bits of text (vocabulary glossaries that provided transliterations of foreign words into Japanese and other commentary) in the images swirling about the picture like a tabloid magazine cover bustling with activity.

An example is the “Complete Detailed View of Yokohama Main Street and the Miyozaki Quarter” of 1860 by Utagawa Sadahide. This is a large format print made of smaller printed sheets glued together – taking advantage of the system of printer and carver. It is much like an illustrated tourist map, with its hovering point of view showing the whole city and its details of commerce and daily life. This map includes a very striking American flag in the lower left, indicating where the foreigners stayed within a walled area of the city. The “map” is pocked with hovering red signs indicating local businesses, tea houses and more, reminiscent of advertisements on diner placemats for local businesses.

These mass produced prints have delightful characteristics and misprints resulting from their production. I love the clumsiness with which the artists stylized the unfamiliar dresses of western women to create beautiful patterning. Similarly, in facial features such as facial hair, in one particular portrait from 1861 by Yoshitsuya of an Englishman with musket - his beard rendered like the stylized curls of a Chinese dragon dog.

Often the artists were documenting places they had never seen, and incorporating architecture of far away lands like Paris – and the images take on a peculiar flattening but continue to use that hovering angled point of view.A few examples show gorgeously clumsy typography of western words, juxtaposed against the tight calligraphy of the Japanese text. In “The Great French Soullier Circus and Equestrian Acrobatic Show” of 1871 by Utagawa Yoshiharua, a wonderful poster advertising a circus with horses and acrobats, “Soullier” is awkwardly carved as the artist struggled to form the western letters.

Walking through the galleries, I realized that these prints were much like engravings in a natural history, or an anthropological book. For example, one of the woodcuts is a print about a Dutch couple, and includes a text that describes the Dutch as a people with white skin, red hair, high noses, and round eyes. It goes on to say they wear a great deal of clothing, are intelligent and superior to rest of world in surgery and finally they write horizontally and eat a wide range of fowl and meat.Another print spoke about people of barbarian nations from 1861, and I realized that we (the westerners) were their barbarians. These truly resembled so many images of “savages” that I’d seen depicted in texts from the 18th and 19th centuries by western artists.I found this show particularly interesting in the context of what is going on in Japan today in light of economic downturn, earthquakes, and political instability. The Japanese are reeling from a huge unemployment rate, which was recently 15.7%, very close to that of the United States.iv The employment system where men went to work for one company for life has disappeared, and in its wake seems to be a backlash against the foreigners perceived as taking their jobs. Martin Fackler’s article “New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign” describes a new type of ultranationalist group in Japan trying to win attention through protests. Just last December the Japanese group Zaitokukai (the equivalent to the US Teaparty) were picketing outside a Korean kindergarten wearing slogans saying “Expel barbarians.”v

This Yokohama show offers views of a time when Japan was opening, rather than shutting down cultural exchange, and perhaps it offers all of us an alternative of seeing the “other”.vi

More information

Picturing the West: Yokohama Prints 1859–1870sAugust 28, 2010 - November 14, 2010Curator, Shelley R. Langdale • Associate Curator of Prints and DrawingsBerman and Stieglitz Galleries, Philadelphia Museum of ArtYou can see the prints online, if you are not able to see them in person by visiting:

Also visit, participating Philagrafika 2010 artist collective Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ exhibition “Down in Fukuoka with the Belarusian Blues” inspired by the story from a translation from French into English and a transposition to the present of a sworn deposition made on July18, 1873, by an 18-year-old French poet, Arthur Rimbaud. Fukuoka happens to be the largest port city, geographically closest to both Korea and China. It’s a small world.